Fernando Alonso has had a dream start to the 2023 Formula 1 season after joining Aston Martin before the start of the season. The 41-year-old F1 veteran has already claimed four podiums in the first five races of the season.
Quite a bit of that credit goes to the Aston Martin car under him, which has been performing like a beast recently. Fernando Alonso has even called it the fastest car that he has ever had.
Otmar Szafnauer, the current team principal of Alpine, has claimed that he had a huge role to play in the recent success that is being enjoyed by Fernando Alonso. Otmar Szafnauer used to be the team principal of Aston Martin till the end of the 2021 season.
He left the Silverstone-based outfit at the beginning of 2022 and joined Alpine. He believes that Aston Martin is reaping what he sowed in the team.
Otmar Szafnauer had signed a lot of talented engineers for Aston Martin
When Otmar was the team principal of Aston Martin, he recruited a lot of talented mechanics and engineers for the team. He believes that it is due to this, that Aston Martin has been able to build a car that can fight for the podium places.
Otmar said, “There is a lot of talk about Dan Fallows and Eric Blandin and their work on the current car, but… who signed them? And along with them other technicians from Red Bull or Mercedes have come to the Silverstone team.”
However, the results of these signings weren’t visible instantly. Otmar has an answer for that as well. He said,
“It took time to make a difference, because first they have to respect the ‘gardening’, which in high-profile figures is always long, and then they have to start working in the new team, integrate, before starting to do things.”
What he is referring to is the Gardening period where an employee, after leaving a team, cannot start working at a new team so he cannot supply confidential information to his new team.
Many F1 fans, however, think otherwise. There were quite a few comments by fans that claimed that the only contribution that Otmar has made towards the success of Aston Martin is that he forced Fernando Alonso to join Aston Martin by forcing him out of Alpine.
Otmar is hinting at him being given a bit more time at Alpine
Otmar is currently having quite a tough time at Alpine. Laurent Rossi, the CEO of Alpine, is not satisfied with the results of the team and has commented that he would make changes to the team if the performance does not improve. However, Otmar wants a bit more time to work as he believes that it requires time to have a positive result.
He gave an example to explain his demand for time. He revealed that Alpine ordered a new simulator about a month ago, but it will take about a year for the new simulator to be set up and running at their office. Thus, the results would not be visible for quite some time.
